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Citadel Armor
Overview During the Serpent war the Grand Duchy had been largely successful with their Bunker armor's but not as much with their air force. An attempt was made to marry these two fields. A bunker armor that could join the fight in the air or on the ground in an instant. A small team was commissioned to look into the possibility of such a vessel. The design went under a very public launch, largely for the use of propaganda, under the name EX-TF-01 Citadel armor. At an anticipated height of 4.66 meters tall it was by far the largest Bunker armor designed. It wielded a twin barrel BSLG-12000 laser cannon capable of destroying a Serpent Golem in a single blast. Two barrels were used to increase the rate of fire as the largest restriction on BLSG type beam weapons was overheating and warping of the guns barrel. A second barrel would allow it to fire one before firing the other and allowing the first to cool down, increasing combat proficiency. This did require a large amount of power that could only be provided by the power packs utilized by high ranking Juggernauts; vastly restricting the amount that could theoretically be built. These power packs would also be required to power it's transformation to a jet mode. This flight mode required a large amount of power to maintain speed given it's large wing span to help during quick take offs from ground combat to air combat. The design was officially announced by a Grand Duchy press team as a new killer weapon to aid in the conflict against Serpent. Work was said to be going good and a prototype was slated for a public demonstration, but several delays prevented it from being daubed. After the conclusion of the Serpent war in 378 DoS public updates became less and less frequent and the Citadel armor slowly faded into the background as newer more impressive Bunker armors were unveiled utilizing tech from the Serpent empire. Armor modes Citadel Armor The Citadel armor was named for the most defensible part of a castle, and as such this was (intended) to be the most powerful version of a Bunker armor. It's large height towered even over the Bunker-P armor, yet it had to weigh even less then most for it's flight mode. As such it utilized carbon nano tubes, similar to those found in orbital elevators, over 74% of it's design. Another issue was due to its size it couldn't be conventionally controlled by simply wearing it. Instead the pilot would have to be very short, likely a Pimira, and would be required to make use of a full neural link with the suit in order to maximize control with as few controls as could be fit inside the cockpit. An interesting note on it's design were the heel spurs on the backs of it's legs, many speculate that they were to prevent it from falling backwards due to its flight pack/wings heavy weight and some speculate that it was to help funnel engines hidden within it's legs during flight mode. Citadel Flight The flight mode of the Citadel armor was the most unique part of it's design. Well the Grand Duchy's PR teams assured that the ability to have a unit that could go from ground combat to flight and vice versa had an invaluable amount of uses in combat an UCC based tech company crunched the numbers and discovered it's only real useful ability would be like a gluier to get to the ground and act like a shock paratrooper; something that the Bunker-R was already intended to function as. The flight mode was suspected to be largely unstable with its lack of elevators, though some speculated that if there were engines in the legs it could use thrust vectoring to help control flight. To transition into flight mode had it lock the buckler sized kite shield to the bottom of the gun before the forward chest folds open and attaches to the bottom section of the nose cone, the lower torso folds backwards, the head folds down pushing the cockpit backwards, the lower leg uses its double joints to fold behind the upper legs, the feet and leg spurs collapse together, the arms collapse inwards and the shoulders twist back wards to line up with the feathered out section of the chest and the wings extend. Weapons The Citadel armor only utilizes two weapons systems BSLG-12000 laser cannon During the Serpent war the Grand Duchy utilized a new tool that was earned the name: beam laser. The BSLG (Blast Slug Laser Gun) was designed to work by combining the best of a laser gun and a plasma cannon, nearly undodge-able and could deliver a massive amount of penetrating heat. The BSLG-1200 uses two barrels to utilize the second barrel as the first cools down, increasing rate of fire during combat. GF-108-2 Light rail gun Two shoulder mounted light rail guns were mounted to the shoulders of the Citadel armor. These rail guns were expected to largely to act as hold out weapons instead of the primary system relied on for combat. They were placed in such a way that they could also be used in flight mode. Additional weapons systems The Citadel armor is able to have more weapons mounted to it either by carrying them by hand, attaching them to its shield or mounting missiles to the bottom of its wings. Size and impact The Citadel armor dwarfs all other Bunker armors, in use at the time, by the Grand Duchy of Julithar. This was on of the contributing factors for many within the Mass Alliance to dismiss it as a tool of propaganda rather then a reasonable weapon. However it does seem as though the Grand Duchy was in fact planning to build a unit with the ability to act in multi-roles like this. To many it showed how the Grand Duchy was beginning to outpace the Mass Alliance in terms of technical achievements towards the end of the Serpent war. The Mass Alliance was forced to build ships and equipment in mass quantities in order to fight a war of attrition against the onslaught of Serpent forces that had invaded their territory, however the Grand Duchy being so far away from the front lines was able to experiment with new equipment and make the revolution in weapons that allowed for the beam lasers to become a practical tool of war. A tool that would give them advantages later down the line when the spheres of influence began rubbing up against each other once more.